Must have been early 2007 when my right foot started to complain about holding me up. This was something new and extremely disconcerting: my physical connection to the ground no longer dependable. If you’re alive and weight bearing on this gravity-infused planet, there’s a likelihood you know this one: pain emanating from the sole of the foot. Starts with a little twinge, a random ache here and there, a curiosity. Then it starts to get louder. Wow, first step out of bed exquisitely painful, easing a bit as it warms up. When it never really goes away, when it begins to haunt your every move…well now it has your attention. It can be very shaky ground.

Presence does not seem like such an optimal strategy when your breast is squished between two hard plastic plates, the technician prompting you to hold your breath and the rat-a-tat sound of technology like incoming wounded. I watch myself take a swift left turn into numbness and then just as quickly call myself back. There has been a lot of growth over twenty-six years of practice in this annual predicament. Breathe, be here, be grateful.

Musings from the Portland airport…no matter what their unique specialty, medical professionals tend to treat their own problems. I’m no different. Mostly that’s worked well over a lifetime of various musculoskeletal challenges. But last year at this time, I needed a partner in treatment: another set of skilled hands and eyes, a coach and witness.

Back deck the other night, completely feeling my place on this planet, aligned between myriad stars blinking away up there and molten center of earth deep below. We folks in teaching-land love to throw concepts like “grounded” and “centered” out there as instruction platform. Here is what I felt that night: there is simply no way you can think or understand your way into the physical sensation of being grounded. Let alone the metaphorical poetic meaning of it. And centered? This is not something you wrap your head around and “get”.

Sometimes I’m just up in my studio, minding my own business, moving freely to some new tune and, without warning, inner worlds collide. The analytical part of me wants to know what creates a fertile ground like this, as if I could hang on to it, or make it happen at will. Not so simple. But three elements always seem present in an alchemical moment. Something---a concept, an abstraction, a teaching---has piqued my interest, my body is in a wave of motion, my mind is relatively unengaged. It always comes on like a download from the universe.

A strangely cloaked woman lurked outside the Berkeley workshop, her pinched facial features the only skin visible. She was unable to enter the room until all cell phones were turned off. It took two days before everyone understood that off means off…not mute, not airplane mode. Apparently there are highly sensitive canaries out in our world, people who adversely sense the man-made electromagnetic field (EMF) that has quickly been established on our planet. Without voting on it, without research, without careful consideration…we surrounded ourselves first with electrical wires and now with cell towers.

“Let me tell you a story.” Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen opened with this invitation after lunch break, every imaginable student body imprint sprawled over Asian rugs. The story of the egg poured equally over us all. The egg that lived in your mother, inside your grandmother, the egg that became you. The valiant brotherhood of sperm, one triumphant. The first division to yolk sac and amniotic cavity, evolving into front body and back body. The front giving rise to breath and digest, the back enveloping skin, sense organs.

Last year at this time I was entering “body not operating as expected” zone. Know that one? Pain in my left hip increasing in severity and everything I knew not creating the shift needed. I was yet to travel to Italy, seek out physical therapy from someone other than me and obtain that illuminating X-ray. I had no idea the hell I was going to go through from Labor Day through Thanksgiving, before things would begin to shift for the better. I am recalling this right now and remembering that the potential for change---good or bad---is alive in every moment. Wondering what life has in store.

I had radar-anticipated a personal nice easy slide into July and it was just not happening. For ten days my post-Texas homecoming churned a nightmarish stew of daily new computer “issues” mixed with a raspy hanger-on bronchitis. I was at a personal nadir when the Dallas news splashed all over my breakfast table. I had just fallen in love with people in Dallas so these familiar scenes and déjà vu phrases were tinctured with immediate poignancy.

We’ve all heard this one. Think you’re enlightened? Spend three days with your family. Just back from quite a large gathering of the clan, so I can attest. Though I’m really not sure exactly what enlightenment is, I’m pretty sure I’m not. Same situation twenty years ago? There has been evident evolution. Stay tuned as I follow a thread leading us from this family reunion all the way to the devastation in Orlando.

Feet. They have so much of my attention right now because five patients in the last month have come for treatment with variations on the same theme. Sometimes God works like that in my studio, honing my attention for a specific purpose. And I am listening. Three of the five had done the mainstream medical run-around. Podiatrists, orthopedists, sports medicine docs. Diagnosed with plantar fasciitis and treated with anti-inflammatory, rest, ice, night splints, orthotics and, the final blow, roll your foot on this ball. By report, those who sought medical care had barely been touched by medical hands, if at all.

I remember 2009 as our 5Rhythms semi-homeless year. Difficulties with the City of Sacramento at McKinley Park Clunie landed us in these dire straits. The YLI space wasn’t working and we floundered along at Deep until year’s end. I was understandably wary when a random call from the City tempted us back. But we took the leap; Coloma was not Clunie and the administration seemed to bend over backward making up for previous bad behavior.

Most mornings I have a mini-conversation with my ego. Initially flattered by the attention, he (yes, it is a “he”) usually slinks away in embarrassment when he sees the nature of my musings. This daily moment is sponsored by The Enneagram Institute who brilliantly light up my inbox with a message based on my “type” each and every day. Things like “What would it be like to explore really being fully yourself today? Can you reveal some hidden part of yourself, at least to someone you can trust?”

How do you create a container safe enough to literally dance like no one is watching, unfold, unravel, let the truth become visible on the outside? For sure, the quality of the space and facilitator is important. But in a Thursday night circle a couple weeks ago, I wanted to flesh out the significant contribution of every single person present. How stepping onto a dance floor is akin to entering a sacred contract, an agreement to help hold this so-called container. The quality of our individual presence is the ultimate glue that knits the space together.

From the time I could wrestle a newspaper open, I was an avid reader of Dear Abby. Kind of embarrassing. Yet there was something reassuring about this daily drop into the human condition, knowing she would always provide a pat answer. When I figured out that “pat” didn’t cut it in the real world, I outgrew Abby. So when the Bee starting carrying Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax, I figured it would be Dear Abby Re-dux. But she’s not. She is always spot on, real deal, cut to the chase and deliver. Who would believe I would glean totally pertinent self-care advice from this writer?

Maybe you already know this: we have a brain in our belly---literally, scientifically, experientially.   Our heads, in this intelligence-biased, information-intensive era are super-loud. So it is quite easy to bypass this rich fertile more quiet region. This Sunday we spent all day belly-rooted in the SF Tending workshop. A student there reminded me about Philip Shepherd and an interview in Sun Magazine April 2014. What follows is pulled from this fascinating source.

When it came to those college level non-life science classes like physics and chemistry…well, I scraped by. But I totally get this Gabrielle Roth basic physics quote:

“Energy moves in waves. Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. Human beings are just that, energy, waves, patterns, and rhythms…nothing more, nothing less…a dance.
”

Remember Joe Montana? I am so NOT a football fan. In fact, I’m thrilled the movie Concussion is outing the incredible damage this violent past time incurs on the gladiators who give up quality of life for our insatiable entertainment need. Sorry if I am offending. But incredible damage and Joe Montana played a big role in my professional life.

For twenty-five years my morning ritual has held fast. I sit in meditation. The commitment has not wavered though focus and technique have varied. If meditation success is measured via reduced thoughts, longer periods of quiet mind, this practice has been utter failure. But improvement has been vast if favorable outcome points to a snowballing ability to witness what is happening moment by moment. And that spills off the cushion in so many ways, some of them less than pleasant. Gone are the days of unconscious, less than optimal behavior. I have the skilled privilege of watching myself f--k up. Like using the F word in a newsletter. Really? Yup. Because labeling behavior as f—king up is exactly what I want to talk about.

The Mohawk people, in their indigenous wisdom, practiced condolence ritual, “where they tend to the bereaved with an elegant series of gestures, wiping tears from the eyes with the soft skin of a fawn.” This poignant image and so much more from an interview with Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. He told of the Southwest Pueblo tribe with their “crying songs to help move grief along.”